Legendary feats of Jonah Lomu and Chester Williams will never be forgotten

All Blacks star Jonah Lomu and South African flyer Chester Williams will always be remembered for their feats at the 1995 Rugby World Cup and the impact they had on the sport.

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There was a sad symmetry as the Wallabies headed off to Japan for the Rugby World Cup this week.

Coming just days after the shock death of former Springboks winger Chester Williams, it meant that two of the most important figures in Rugby World Cup history have now passed away.

And they will both always be remembered for their feats in the same tournament, the 1995 RWC won on home soil by South Africa.

The first, and most famous, to leave us was, of course, the incomparable All Blacks winger Jonah Lomu, who died in 2015 aged 40 after a long battle with kidney disease.

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All Blacks winger Jonah Lomu was a sensation at the 1995 World Cup in South Africa.

Lomu’s performance against England in the semi-final of the 1995 tournament is regarded as the most important in the history of the game.

Rugby was on the verge of turning professional but no-one was really sure if the game, once known as “the last bastion of amateurism”, could attract the sort of international corporate support needed to pay the bills.

Lomu’s awesome demolition job – especially the first of his four tries in which he turned England fullback Mike Catt into a speed bump – changed all that.

As England centre Will Greenwood put it, “I think everyone sat up in the world of sport and entertainment and said, ‘Who’s this guy, what’s this sport? We need to get this onto a global stage’ and it changed rugby that day.”

Jonah Lomu used England fullback Mike Catt as a speed bump in the semi-final. Picture: Ben Radford/Allsport

Chester Williams, who died from a heart attack at the age of 49 last Friday week, didn’t make the same impact on the field as Lomu – it is fair to say no-one has before or since – but in his own way he was just important to the history of the game.

And far more important to the history of his country.

When newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela targeted the Springboks’ 1995 Rugby World Cup campaign as a catalyst to bring the divided country together, he saw Williams as a vital part of his plan.

Just the third black player to have played for the Springboks, and the only non-white in the World Cup squad, Williams was seen by Mandela as a figurehead to break down racial barriers that had been built up over half a century.

Chester Williams scored four tries in South Africa’s quarter-final win against Samoa.

Before the 1995 Rugby World Cup non-white South Africans would support whatever country was playing the Springboks. Mandela was convinced that with Williams in the side they would cheer for the home team and that a breakdown in the divisions in other parts of society would follow.

By his own admission Williams was not the most naturally talented player in the team but even so he was under no illusions about the importance Mandela placed on him.

In 2014 he told a journalist: “In 1994 he called me to lunch at his house, where he discussed my role in his strategy.”

Williams became the focal point of promotions for the tournament. His image was on billboards and posters, and Chester Williams caps were distributed around the country.

Chester Williams was called into the South African 1995 World Cup squad at the knockout stage after an injury to Pieter Hendriks. Picture: AFP

All was going according to plan until he was injured in a warm-up match and left out of the final squad. It was only by the knockout stage that he recovered and replaced the suspended Pieter Hendriks for the quarter-final against Western Samoa.

His four tries in that match ensured his place in the semi-final against France and then the try-less final which the Springboks won in an extra-time upset.

As the Clint Eastwood film Invictus correctly showed, it was an amazing win and a momentous tournament in which Lomu and Williams played major roles.

And no matter what happens in Japan between now and the RWC final on November 2 one thing is certain – we’ll never seen anything like it again.